This week’s Folk Show features a number of surprise releases which recently sneaked out on Bandcamp including an all-acoustic EP recorded at home during lockdown by Richard Thompson titled Bloody Noses.
Gillian Welch & David Rawlings released a new Bandcamp album yesterday titled ‘All The Good Times Are Past And Gone‘ from which we taken a couple of tracks. They gave this simple message to fans:
For reasons better discussed in the history books, in the Spring of 2020 Gillian and I dusted off an old tape machine and did some home recording. Sometimes we bumped the microphone, sometimes the tape ran out, but in the end we captured performances of some songs we love. Five are first takes and five took a little more doing, but they all helped pass the time and held our interest in playback enough that we wanted to share them with you. We sincerely hope that you enjoy
David & Gillian
Aoife O’Donovan also released a lockdown album recorded live in Brooklyn at Aoife’s home on April 25, 2020. Plus we have new music fro Kris Drever with his new single More Than You Know which drops on July 17th on which he is projecting a little kindness into a world which right now seems pretty hard-hearted. We all sometimes focus on the one voice that
should be ignored.
Looking to the future we new forthcoming releases from Brona McVittie. She performed Eillen Aroon for us in a special Folk Radio Session here, and this track is taken from her sophomore album The Man in the Mountain which is out on 2 September. We also premiered the new video for And You Evade Him/Born in the Blood, the new album single from Joshua Burnside. Dirk Powell has a new album arriving on 14 August; When I Wait For You features musicians drawn from both sides of the Atlantic, including Rhiannon Giddens (fiddle, banjo), Sara Watkins (fiddle, vocals), Sean Watkins (vocals), Powell’s daughter Amelia and Sophie on vocals, and members of the Transatlantic Sessions house band, Donald Shaw (accordion, piano, production), Mike McGoldrick (flute, whistle), John McCusker (fiddle) and James Macintosh (drums). We’ll be bring you more from this gem soon.
Kevin Henderson And Neil Pearlman have also just release their debut album Burden Lake which we wrote about here. This track in particular caught mu attention when I watched their promotional video – Sjovald, which translates as ‘Sea Power’ or ‘Sea Ruler’, was shipwrecked on the island of Yell in north Shetland around 1500 and settled there. His adventurous spirit and fortitude inspired Kevin to pen the song.
Dylan Carlos, Cein Sweeney and John McCartin work their magic on fiddle, flute and guitar on their new album Carlos Sweeney McCartin which features guests Donal Lunny, John Joe Kelly and George McAdam.
It has only been a year since The Magpies burst onto the UK folk scene in the summer of 2019, but in that short space of time, they have already made a huge impression with their fresh brand of transatlantic neo-folk. They are award-winning singer-songwriter Bella Gaffney, mandolin virtuoso Polly Bolton, fiddle player Holly Brandon and Sarah Smout on cello. You can hear them in action the Shuffle Set from their latest album Tidings.
We have a gorgeous opening track from Marie Fielding’s new album The Spectrum Project which celebrates being ‘in the moment’, with the majority of its ten tracks played in full for the first time during the recording process. The result is a remarkable album that captures the raw energy and emotion synonymous with the music-making process while allowing Marie’s intuitive and versatile playing to take its rightful place centre stage.
The Wilderness Yet will be a new name to most. They take their name from a line in Gerard Manley Hopkins’s evocative poem about the wild Inversnaid, the Sheffield-based trio fuse the clear, charismatic vocals of former BBC Young Folk Award finalist Rosie Hodgson with the fine, sensitive fiddling of Rowan Piggott and the deft guitar and flute playing of Philippe Barnes. Yes, those names will be familiar to a fair few – Rosie and Philippe have worked together in the London- Irish band Crossharbour while Sussex-raised Rosie and County Galway-born Rowan have toured together as a duo and played festivals from Sidmouth to Warwick, Ely to Bromyard (Rowan is a past winner of Bromyard’s ‘Future of Young Folk’ Award).
Rosie and Rowan have both released successful solo albums {Rise Aurora and Mountscribe) while Philippe, who studied Irish music at the University of Limerick, has performed with various line-ups including The David Munnelly Band, Celtic band All Jigged Out and hip-hop exponents Dizraeli &The Small Gods.
We also have a track from Samantha Crain‘s new album ‘Small Death’ which we reviewed here and a couple from the past courtesy of Buffy Saint-Marie and Shelagh McDonald.
Enjoy
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Music Played
00:00 Richard Thompson – As Soon As You Hear The Bell
04:14 Kris Drever – More Than You Know
08:23 Gillian Welch & David Rawlings – Jackson
11:46 Bróna McVittie – Eileen Aroon
16:07 Joshua Burnside – And You Evade Him/Born in the Blood
20:56 Aoife O’Donovan – Lakes of Pontchartrain
25:10 Dirk Powell – The Little Things
28:20 John McCartin & Donal Lunny & Dylan Carlos & Cein Sweeney & George McAdam & John & Joe Kelly – The Corner House / Jack Rowe’s / The Caucus Reel
32:13 Gillian Welch & David Rawlings – Fly Around My Pretty Little Miss
34:44 Samantha Crain – Joey
39:17 Shelagh McDonald – Silk and Leather
42:12 Buffy Sainte-Marie – Rolling Log Blues
45:37 Kevin Henderson And Neil Pearlman – Sjovald
49:00 The Wilderness Yet – Seán Ó Duibhir A’ Ghleanna
52:10 Marie Fielding – Spectrum
55:18 The Magpies – Shuffle Set
Photo by Carsten Stalljohann